Notably, Meats can be used as bait, for the recruitment of Pigs, as offering to the Pig King for gold, and are a requirement to construct the Meat Effigy. Some Food, such as Monster Meat or Durian can damage health instead of restoring it.

The effects of eating stale or spoiled food are worse when playing as Wickerbottom. Stale food will only give 1/3 of the hunger and 1/4 of health. Spoiled food will restore only 1/6 of the hunger. The rest of the values is the same as other characters.

Cooking Food on fire or in Crock Pot halves the spoiled amount of the Food.